Erin Brockovich Investigates 'Mass Hysteria' Mystery Illness

After a dozen teen girls in upstate New York began exhibiting tic-like symptoms, doctors diagnosed the group with mass hysteria. But parents and others in the community think there's more to it than that — so they asked famed environmental crusader Erin Brockovich to help.

Don't Miss This

Last fall, after a group of teens at New York’s LeRoy Junior-Senior High School began simultaneously exhibiting Tourette syndrome-like tics and verbal outbursts, experts were at a loss to explain why. Air quality tests and mold spore counts seemed to rule out environmental causes, and medical exams and neurological workups eliminated infection or disease. Then, earlier this month, doctors came up with a surprising diagnosis: mass hysteria, a phenomenon in which various people in a common group (such as students within a school) experience a spontaneous outbreak of physical symptoms caused by psychological stress.

For a time, the diagnosis seemed to satisfy public curiosity — that is, until three more students fell victim to the mystery illness, leading the teens’ already skeptical parents to question whether the root of the problem was physical rather than psychological. Amid their growing concern, they sought the help of Erin Brockovich, a legal aide and activist best known for her fight to expose a toxic chemical cover-up in Hinkley, Calif. (The story later became an Oscar-winning film starring Julia Roberts.)

Brockovich took on the LeRoy case last week and has since spent several days studying federal and state reports of a 1970 train derailment that spilled cyanide and an industrial solvent called trichloroethene within three miles of the school. She and her team, which includes environmental investigator Bob Bowcock, plan to further test the groundwater and soil for traces of harmful substances.

“It will probably take six weeks before I could have definitive results that could say that contamination migrated under the school and would be a cause of concern for me, or if it didn’t and was not in the groundwater, then I’m going to rule the groundwater out,” Bowcock told USA Today. “If I rule the groundwater out, then I have to wait until the first thaw to rule out the soil and the air.”

Bowcock and Brockovich have met with some resistance from the school — reports say members of their group were escorted off campus on Saturday for “grandstanding” and illegally collecting samples — but if Brockovich’s previously documented intrepidness is any indication, they won’t stop until they’ve solved the mystery.

“We don’t have all the answers, but we are suspicious,” Brockovich told USA Today. “They have not ruled everything out yet. The community asked us to help and this is what we do.”

This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.

Advertising Notice

This Site and third parties who place advertisements on this Site may collect and use information about
your visits to this Site and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of
interest to you. If you would like to obtain more information about these advertising practices and to make
choices about online behavioral advertising, please click here.